


Can I Fly?

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, a short drabble on the kids and their relationships with their guardians, just a short thing written on a whim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:22:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universally asked question by children, whether or not they can fly. When they were young, four children asked, and four guardians responded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can I Fly?

“Can people fly?” You ask, after falling out of the tree. Your name is John, and your father just caught you after a twig broke, and sent your tiny body came tumbling down laughing, into his strong arms.

“Of course, John.” He smiles that big, warm smile, giving your unruly hair a ruffle after setting you down, “But you must fly while you sleep, in your mind, for the policeman just might see you trying to fly away and take you away to prison.” As he speaks, he crouches, raising his hands in a threatening and dramatic gesture. Eyes wide, mouth open, but in a few moments you laugh, nodding your head as you do, “Of course, I could help you make believe you’re flying, just for some practice.”

With that, he sweeps you off the ground, and jogs around with you jostling on his shoulders and clinging tightly to his head, cheering him on while you practice flight. In the years that pass, you forget, but there’s a certain lightness that always settled in your heart as you rode the wind, as if you fulfilled a goal that you no longer remember setting.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I don’t think that’s true.” You say, frowning at your mother. Your name is Rose, the warm, fluffy presence on your lap is Jaspers, and the woman sitting on the side of your bed is your mother, a book of Peter Pan opened to the middle. She smells faintly of vodka, of course, and she is shaking her head insistently, a playful smile on her face,

“I’m telling you Rosie, he flew, true as it gets.”

“But he didn’t.” Your head is shaking insistently to rival hers, as you shift Jaspers, “If any little girl jumped out the window to follow a boy she’d fall straight down.”

“And how do you know that, Rosie?” She’s got a little smile on her face, as if she’s pleased, she’s teasing you and amused at her skeptical daughter.

“Because when people fall they just die. I read it in another story. And fairies are just bugs people thought were tiny humans.” You roll over on your side, taking Jaspers with you and turning your back to her. Faintly, you here a little sigh, and a ‘good night’ when the lights go out. She doesn’t read to you again.

In the years that pass, in the drunken moments of memory, you recall that night, and you wish you’d been kinder to her when you were younger. You pour out the vodka into the glass, and cry, staining your mother’s scent on the pillow with your tears.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What would happen if I followed the crows?” You ask, staying at your brother and rubbing your skinned knee gained from the strife.

“You’d drop like a stone, and your head would split open on the pavement.” He says offhandedly, cleaning off the sword. Moments like these, you’ve learned are crucial, you don’t have much time before he disappears again. You sometimes catch him out of the corner of your eye, a blur when that shoves you away when you’re too slow to avoid the blade stars flying at you, but otherwise you’re as good as alone in the apartment, save for Cal.

“Why?” You turn to him, scratching the back of your head.

“Humans don’t fly, lil’ man. That’s all there really is to say on the matter.”

You don’t ask any further, and eventually you learn to stop watching the crows, stop wondering where they were going, or where they’d been. In the years that pass, you remember that moment, and you think on what you said to Terezi when she’d asked if you’d loved him. You think that maybe, you know one of the reasons why you don’t.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your name is Jade Harley, and you don’t need to know if you can fly. You know it’s fun to pretend, but you know that inside people are heavy bones and weighty flesh. You know what it’s like to take those bones out, and you know that gravity makes it so. In later years, you do fly, and you forget what it was like when you poked at yourself as well, five years old and wondering if you were made of the same stuff as your grandpa.


End file.
